I came to this project in a strange kind of way: in 1990 I was a
backpacker. That odd breed of traveller, often young, that likes to
consider itself different or aloof to regular tourists.

Like many of many friends, I was supposed to be heading to Australia,
seeking beer, parties, and the beach. But a variety of complicated
reasons, not least a love now long lost, led me to the Middle East.

For several months, I lived and worked on a kibbutz. Stuck in the Negev
desert, smack bang on the border with Jordan, Kibbutz Grofit was a
curious place: a farming co-operative, boasting a small electronics
factory, a fortress built on a towering rock, with several bunkers,
trenches, an armoury and 40-50 soldiers protecting it at all times. It
seemed at once part of the world, at the same time removed from it.

During my time there, and the travels that followed in the country,
people kept telling me 'you don't understand'. Everytime I asked about
politics or made a comment about Jews or Palestinians, I'd be met with
this answer. I remember an Israeli truck driver giving me a lift when I
was hitching down to the port of Eilat (itself an odd place, wedged next
to the Jordanian city of Aqaba). The driver tried to explain things to
me in his broken English. The gist, as he became ever more animated, was
that 'the Arab doesn't know when he's dead, even when we kill him each
time'.

I just smiled politely, hoping not to anger him any more. But I still
didn't understand. That, and being constantly held responsible for the
failures of the British Empire by everyone I met, made me mad. But I
guess at some stage, these people were right. With my Guardian reader's
sentimentality, it's true, I didn't understand.

From Israel, I whizzed through the Occupied Territories on my way to the
Sinai and Egypt. I was following a well-trodden path, with my Lonely
Planets guidebook and the company of fellow backpackers. And, like many,
I remained ignorant of my surroundings.

It wasn't until many years - a decade - later, that some of the tragedy
of the situation started to make sense. In the intervening period, I had
travelled through various Arab and North African countries, reporting
from the civil war in Algeria, covering the conflict in Kurdistan, and
having lived in (then escaped from) Kuwait, just prior to the Gulf War.

In Lebanon two years ago, not long after the Israelis had left, I was
escorted around Palestinian refugee camps, meeting members of a
diaspora, some of whom had lived there since 1948.

In one camp, I was told by my guide, there were 17 different factions at
work. In the southern suburbs of Beirut, I saw all the flags for
Hezbollah and other Islamic militias. Then on the border with Israel, I
watched as Lebanese civilians threw symbolic stones at the 'hated'
enemy, the Jews.

I'd stood on the other side of that border 10 years earlier, with
Israeli friends, watching the IDF's tanks go off on patrol, looking for
'terrorists'.

So, the Middle East - and the Israeli/Palestinian trauma - is something
I can't forget. Or escape.

Yet it was another project that brought me here. One which Ethan Casey
(co-editor of Peace Fire) helped put together: my book about a six-year
journey into the heart of extremism, and the extreme right. Homeland.

My journeys in Homeland brought me into contact with a wide variety of
white supremacists (or white nationalists as they like to call themselves). I felt uncomfortable as they
regailed me with tales of Jewish power and influence - though I myself
was not Jewish - and their questioning of the Holocaust.

This seemed a key issue for many of these movements, whether here in
England with the British National Party, in Germany with the
Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or the Reform Party in the
USA, gathered around senior ex-Republican Pat Buchanan.

We've all heard the ridiculous rumour that all the Jews mysteriously
failed to turn up for work, the day the World Trade Center was
destroyed. Some of the people I met seriously believed this.

This virulent anti-Semitism led some of the extremists to try and link
up with Islamic groups. One KKK member I spotted posted to a newsgroup
that his fellows should try and find any Palestinians in their area, to
link up and join forces.

Ironically, this was happening at the same time as a rise in
Islamaphopobia across the West: as riots were tearing apart cities in
northern England and groups like the BNP here campaigned against
Muslims. Muslim = Terrorist was the simple maxim.

Even two days ago, I received an email from a senior white supremacist
in the States - someone involved with Pat Buchanan's Reform Party - who
told me that 'we' (the Christians and Jews) have to put aside our
differences and link up against the Muslims! It is a sad state of
affairs when zealots unite.